Ep. #708: Aidan Walker, Rep. Nancy Mace, Michael Smerconish

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Maher.

Start the clock.

How are you doing, people?

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Everybody's in place.

Thank you, I appreciate it.

Thank you for coming.

Thank you.

Wait, please, there's so much

news to get to.

Big story, this just happened.

James Comey, our former FBI director, was indicted today by the Trump administration.

I didn't even know he had a talk show.

Unbelievable.

Oh, wow.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yes.

Trump is in his

we caught you with your taillight out phase of

justice.

They will find something something to pull you over for.

He's been trying to get Shifty Shift

and Letitia James, who prosecuted him in New York.

And James called me, he's been, shall we say, agitating

for this.

There was a guy, Eric Siebert, he was the Attorney General, U.S.

Attorney there in Virginia, and they wanted him to indict Letitia James.

He came back, he said, boss, I can't find any evidence.

Fired.

Fired, canned his ass, put in Lindsay Lindsay Halligan.

She is an insurance lawyer, 36 years old, his personal lawyer, never prosecuted anybody, and now she's going after the former FBI head.

If this was an episode of Boston Legal, you'd say this show was Jump the Shark.

Yeah,

Lindsay Halligan, did I mention she's a former beauty patching contestant?

Oh, yes.

For the talent portion, she kissed ass.

So,

so okay, so if you are tracking the rise of autocracy, okay, we are

past the muzzling dissident phase, and we're into the prosecuting political enemies phase, I think Trump could be in the general's uniform by Christmas.

And, you know, this is why it might be good to get back to learning civics, because I don't know if people understand this.

Presidents are not supposed to comment at all on ongoing investigations.

This is the way we always did it.

This is not exactly how we're doing it now.

Trump said, or tweeted of Comey, he said, one of the worst human beings this country has ever been exposed to.

Worst, worst, like

private island having sex with kids, worst?

I mean,

that level worst?

Wow.

And the president, he spoke at a lot of places this week, very busy.

He was at the UN.

The UN always meets in September.

And he was talking again.

He said this many times about how many wars he has ended.

He has gotten involved and done some of that.

The number keeps going up.

You know, it was six, and then it was seven.

I think this week he said, and if you count pre-wars,

people just thinking of fucking with each other,

Maybe ten.

And

he also said, I'm a modest man, I didn't want to mention it, but also, Oasis, that was me.

I got those.

I got them back together.

But this is interesting.

Of all the lives saved with the wars,

could may not add up to how many lives we're going to save because this week, another big thing, we found out the cause of autism.

It was the Tylenol.

Well, you know what?

Could things like that be involved?

Yes, I've all had said that.

But, you know, come on, it's a little overstating it.

This whole thing, it was a big press conference.

Pregnant women should not take Tylenol.

By the way, you wouldn't be pregnant in the first place if you used Tylenol the way it was designed to back you up when you said, not tonight, I have a headache.

And,

oh, and next up,

next up on the list, the RFK is going to be looking at the abortion pill to see if that's kosher.

Now, look, I'm no fan of the pharmaceutical industry, but do we ever have to do everything all full tilt?

Can't we just meet in the middle?

Now he's putting 100% tariffs on pharmaceutical he wants all our drugs to be local

farmer to table that's

that's where America is now

and another place the president spoke this week Sunday big event there in Arizona the Charlie Kirks Memorial about I mean

two 300,000 people showed up and I thought this was a bright spot here in our troubled nation Charlie Kirk's widow got up there and said she forgave his assassin, which is,

thank you.

Yeah, we can applaud that.

And then Trump offered a rebuttal.

He said, I hate my opponent and

do not want what's best for them.

Got to give it to the Republicans.

Big tent.

Big tent.

Forgive my assassin.

I hate everybody.

Okay.

And in other religious news,

oh, another big religious story this week.

A lot of people, mostly the type who are living on TikTok,

were very excited because they thought the rapture was coming.

Did you see the rapture?

Because some nut on TikTok said Jesus told him the rapture was coming on Tuesday or maybe it was Wednesday.

Really, that's what he said.

And then of course, Jesus flaked.

Oh, Jesus, you know, he knows each time a sparrow falls.

But his own schedule's a mess.

You know what I'm saying?

No.

The only people who actually disappeared this week were the guys out front of Home Depot, and a lot of them were named Jesus.

Anyway,

we've got a great show.

We have Nancy Mace and Michael Smurkanis.

But first up, he is a content creator and internet culture researcher with more than 35 million views on TikTok, and he writes the weekly subsec, how to do things with memes Aiden Walker Aiden Walker

hey you

pleasure to meet you Aiden Walker how are you good

okay well listen you're 24 years old you're new to the audience tell us give us your background who are you who the fuck are you Aiden Walker

so quick edit 26 years old 26 technically I could run for the house but I won't

I am a meme researcher I started out See, already we're lost.

Am I right, older people?

This is why I want you here, because we've had these shootings, another terrible one this week.

The guy shot,

he tried to kill ICE people, I guess he killed a detainee.

But we had the horrible one, Tyler Robinson.

We need someone to explain what's in the minds of these people.

So just tell me, first of all, what is meme researcher?

So a meme is something you might look at on your phone, Bill, or on your phone.

Oh, I know that much.

But what I do is I look at how they originated, how they spread, and what they mean.

A meme is a historical document, like a poem, like a painting, like an article in a newspaper, and I trace their trajectories, their spread, and I try to figure out what they say about us and about.

But they take on new meanings.

I mean, this is part of why people get inspired to kill, because they get insulted by them, right?

They get hurt by them.

They have a meaning that a lot of us older people are not getting, correct?

Yes.

memes are really interactive.

They mean something different to everybody who manipulates and uses them.

And in the case of these horrible acts of violence, where the meme angle kind of comes in is that like what we saw with the young man who shot Charlie Kirk, engraved on those bullet casings were memes.

And so my theory is that one way to read that is to say it's a shitpost.

It's a nihilistic kind of attempt to draw attention to himself and also to call into question the entire world that older people live in.

You know, it's a big fuck you to everybody from law enforcement to a journalist to the regular person reading it in the newspaper.

Yeah, this is what I was saying last week.

I mean, this is where I differ from Jimmy Kimmel.

Jimmy Kimmel was placing someone,

placing the killer on a team.

I think that was his mistake.

I don't think he should be thrown off the air for it.

I don't think he was deliberately lying.

I just think he's in an ideological bubble.

So

that was not what I said.

I said what you said.

It's nihilistic.

Politics is part of it, but it's just politics, they're using it to somehow help them act out their anger.

Let's talk about the ICE killer this week, because I read what his friends said about him, and they kept saying he really wasn't political.

And they doubt whether he was that upset about ICE.

and what they were doing.

Now, he made some good points about ICE.

So did the

Unabomber make some good points.

But I got the feeling that if he had could have gotten laid, he wouldn't have cared about ICE

so much.

Is that true?

So politics is never the only thing that's going on inside of people's brains.

And I think one of the things that's happening in this country and in many others is you have a lot of, especially young people, who don't see a future for themselves, who feel lonely, who feel alienated, and they congregate in these spaces sort of outside of the mainstream where they feel like that online world is more important than their real world.

I mean, it's an experience so many people have that, you know, you work a shitty job that you hate, or you're sitting there trying to get a job and you can't get one, no matter how qualified you are, but you can pull out your phone and you have infinity right there.

You can look at knowledge that you used to have to go like scan microfiche to look at.

You can look at the craziest videos online.

And you can be anyone you want to be.

You can put on any mask.

You can posture as a tough guy, you can posture as somebody who's brilliant and smart, and real life just keeps narrowing all around you.

In this context of crisis that we're all living through, especially young people, many go to the phone.

And I think that there will always be a certain number of people who can't get laid.

Not all of them go on to commit acts.

Most of them don't commit acts of violence.

But some will be demented and twisted.

And if this is how the system is set up, this is the slot people are going to go into.

Well, there certainly were always people who couldn't get laid, me in college.

My condolence.

It's okay.

It's all right.

Okay.

I made up for it.

But I read that this ice killer spent 10,000 hours so far on playing video games.

Okay, 10,000 hours.

That of course rang in my head because the famous, I guess, is that a meme that Malcolm Gladbull said, 10,000 hours.

We all know that number because he wrote a famous essay.

People, if you want to do something in your life, you got to put in your 10,000 hours.

You want to learn to play the guitar?

10,000 hours.

Whatever it is.

You got to put in.

I thought, and this guy wanted to be a stand-up comedian.

He tried.

I thought, well, you know, if you'd put in your 10,000 hours doing that

instead of playing stupid fucking video games, maybe you wouldn't be in the place you're in.

And you talk about what the, you know, the phone and

interactive media, all that stuff, what it can do for you.

Talk a little bit more about what it can do against you because I saw this movie, a lot of people did, it was a water cooler movie on Netflix, a series called Adolescence.

And it's about a kid.

I'm going to give the spoiler alert because it's been out a year.

If you haven't seen it, too fucking bad.

But, you know, at adolescent, he's very young, 13, 14, he kills a girl.

Okay, and they can't figure out if he did it or not.

That's not really what the whodunit is.

The whodunit is why.

And he did do it.

And the adults can't even figure out what the motivation is until a kid explains to them, okay, this is the, show some of the

emojis that were upsetting this kid.

Okay, the red pill.

Again, this is all this world you're talking about that we just don't, they don't want us to understand and we don't.

But we're going to get to it tonight.

The red pill, right?

That's one.

That means,

what does that mean?

The red pill.

So the red pill is a meme that emerges from The Matrix, which is from the 90s.

Right.

And that movie, you know, you offer the blue pill and the red pill, and Keanu Reeves takes the red pill to break out of his reality.

What does it mean today when people see it?

It means...

So what it means is if you take the red pill, then you've broken out of what they call kind of the oppressive reality of like, you know, mainstream society, of respecting people who are different from you, of believing that games that we play in life are fair.

And so for them, taking the red pill means like being one of them, being one of these incels outside of the way that most of us do business and conduct ourselves.

Okay, and then there was one, it was dynamite.

Explosion.

Okay, but that has an alternative meaning.

That doesn't just mean dynamite.

Somehow Somehow that is a taunt to people who can't get laid also.

And then there was the hundred.

I mean, this is just what I'm reading, which apparently means

something about you're always not going to be able to get laid.

Yeah, so the hundred in adolescence, which is a fictional TV show, but is based on a number of real life stories.

That's sort of this

incel idea of like the 80-20 rule, you know, that 80% of women want 20% of men.

But

a lot of these memes have other meanings.

Like the red 100 is also, you know, keep it 100.

Like all of these sort of have many different levels they work across.

And one way to read it is like in that show where the emojis or the memes form this kind of code that adults can't read.

In a way, it's a little bit like a dog whistle with a lot of these memes where they're so ironic, they're so layered in, you know, I don't really mean this, but I can kind of hide behind it that you can put the sort of antisocial or hateful idea behind that.

Yes, I mean, one could say that

certainly what I'm reading about the ice killer this week, he was almost murdering ironically.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, that's a place society has never been.

Yes, young men certainly are bad and fumbly trying to get women to agree to what they want to do.

But it was never like this.

We never had the term incel.

Incel stands for

involuntarily celibate, and they blame the women.

I never blamed the women.

I knew it was I who was lame.

And this guy was into furries.

Tyler Robinson was into furries, which apparently is

what the fuck is it?

What is furries?

So it's a lot like major team sports mascots.

It's people who dress up as animals and go to conventions, and sometimes there is a romantic component.

He was having a romantic component with his transing lover, right?

Tyler was?

We don't know anything for sure.

There's a lot of people saying a lot on very little primary source evidence.

But do you think that kids today, one of the reasons why they're having so much trouble sexually is that the adults have confused them?

I mean, when I was in school, I mean, homosexuality wasn't even discussed very much.

I mean, we knew it, and I didn't think the adults were particularly against it.

It just wasn't brought up.

And certainly nobody ever suggested to me I might be in the wrong body.

Now, I'm not saying there aren't people who aren't

in need of transing.

I think it's rare, but they are.

But I feel like they put it out in the schools so much that maybe it had an ill effect.

Do you think there's any truth to that?

I think that when you were a kid and that was the situation, it led to a whole lot of problems too, but we didn't talk about them.

Like?

Like people who were unable to be their full selves.

And I think that online or off, everybody should have a chance to be who they are in America and receive respect and dignity.

So we're doing the right amount in schools.

Well, I'm not an educator, Bill.

I talk about memes on the internet.

And

you aren't an educator either.

You have a TV show.

Well, fuck you.

I think a lot of people would say I've educated them on a lot of subjects.

And I think this.

I've been educated by you too.

I watched this when I was a kid.

Okay, let's not fight.

I'm glad you're here.

And let me tell you, you're one of the youngest guests, and you've handled this better than a lot of ones who are twice your age.

So I'm all good with this.

One last thing.

You know, these kids, I know I see there's a lot of school shootings.

A lot of them, they don't even try to survive them, the shooter.

They think their life is so fucked.

Do you think their life is really so fucked and they would maybe be benefited by somebody educated with the fact that their life isn't really that bad?

I mean, the things that they're so worried about, I mean, yes, the climate is going to shit, and we do have a dictatorship brewing now, and lots of stuff, but this kid's, you know, you see him, his own actual life didn't seem that awful.

What can we do about that, do you think?

I think that people need to come together more.

I think the temperature needs to be turned down.

And I think it's not just there's a crisis of affordability, you know, whether people will be able to have that deal of like job, house, retirement that feels like we were taught in all the TV shows we watched, people had that.

But I think it's also a crisis of meaning as well.

You know, it's giving people those social bonds,

making them turn their heads up out of the phone when they're on their commute and look at their neighbors and the people around them.

And I think it goes back to what I was saying, you know, giving everybody this shot at dignity and this shot at being seen in our culture,

which I think that's, to me, is the way out.

I'm optimistic looking at the people in my comments who are sharing their experiences when I post a video.

I'm optimistic looking at people I see on the scroll.

You know, TikTok is filled with weirdos and freaks who predict the rapture or just bottles of wine rolling down staircases or weird sludge ASMR, but it's also filled with people just sharing their stories and that gives me a lot of hope.

Good to have that perspective.

You're good at this.

I'm sure we'll see you again.

You'll be educating lots of people.

Thank you very much.

All right, let's meet our fellow.

Okay, hey,

how are you?

Okay, he's the host of Smirkhanish every Saturday on CNN and SiriusXM's the Michael Smirkanish program on weekday mornings.

Michael Smirkanish back with us.

And she is a Republican Congressman from South Carolina, member of the House Armed Services Committee, who recently announced running for governor in 2026.

Very exciting, Nancy Mace.

Okay.

All right.

Well, thank you for being here.

I always say that to my Republican friends.

I say that every week, the Republicans show up.

The Democrats do not.

I say it every week.

I'm going to say it every week.

Stop asking me why the Clintons had never been on the show.

They're invited.

AOC, all these people, they never come.

Ask them.

Get on their case.

But

you guys are happy warriors.

You always show up.

But Lucy, you got some slainy to do.

I mean,

you guys have been saying for a very long time that Trump just says stuff.

But I mean, come on.

We have gone from just saying stuff now to, I mean, James Comey,

you know, I was saying in the monologue, you're not supposed to comment at all, a president, on an ongoing investigation.

He called him bad person, sick guy, did terrible things, guilty as hell.

Would you at least agree that we are in a very different place than we've ever been?

Well, my perspective is that I don't want us to rewrite history here.

In 2016, Chuck Schumer said of James Comey that he lost all confidence in him.

So there have been Republicans and there have been Democrats who have expressed that James Comey has lied, has leaked.

And this is a guy who has to be aware of the...

But that wasn't talking about a trial.

That wasn't talking about an ongoing investigation.

That was just an opinion about a guy who was the FBI director.

Well, right.

But I mean, I don't disagree with Trump that James Comey, he was under oath.

He lied to Congress.

That is a crime.

That's perjury.

Do we know that as a fact?

No.

Well, I would say a jury, a grand jury of his peers, 14 people,

indicted him over this.

I'm an independent.

I'm not here to argue for or against Donald Trump.

And here's my starting point relative to Comey.

I did not believe that Donald Trump should have been prosecuted by Alvin Bragg in the porn case.

I did not believe that Donald Trump should have been prosecuted by Fonnie Willis in the Georgia case.

I did not believe that Letitia James should have brought that civil suit against Donald Trump based on his business dealings.

I said all of that on radio and on television, not to be defensive of Trump, but as an attorney, I thought they were political prosecutions, each of them.

This is worse.

This is worse because now it's the head of government directing the indictment of a former head of the FBI.

And what I worry about the most is the precedent that it will set somebody running for governor, maybe, somebody running for attorney general who's going to feel comfortable in saying so-and-so deserves to face charges.

And most importantly, what it does is it causes a further diminished level of confidence in our institutions, especially the DOJ.

You know, Bill, when people used to say, we're going to bring in the feds, we need a federal investigation, it's because that carried the imprimatur of impartiality.

That's gone.

Nobody has respect now for the federal government, and this is going to make it worse.

I mean, I can add to that or you can rebut it.

I mean, I just feel like he's right.

We were in a completely different place.

I mean, Trump, this may have been something he intended to send to Pam Bondi privately.

It turned out to be a,

not a tweet, what do they call it a truth truth social truthsocial.com okay because it starts with Pam

okay it's an odd way to start a tweet Pam you have to say he you have to admit he's at least transparent he is his heart on the sleeve you know where he stands and you know I come back to when Charlie Kirk was assassinated when he was murdered we found out in the days afterward that there were 91 conservative groups that were targeted by the Biden administration including Turning Point USA including Charlie Kirk so if we're gonna say people are targeted well, we had 91 conservative groups, Republican groups, that were targeted by Biden's administration specifically.

That's not what's going on here.

Targeted is vague.

What does that mean?

But they were being, I guess, being investigated.

That's what the headlines in the article said.

There was some political issue.

Absolutely.

And I feel like this is a pattern: that the Democrats do something bad

just enough to allow the Republicans to do it 10 times worse and say, well, you started it.

That's true.

I don't know how you negotiate with people that want you dead.

I mean,

that's kind of where we are in the political spectrum right now.

And it worries me for our country.

We come on here, an independent, a classical liberal, a conservative, and we have this conversation.

I hope that we, I would hope we could have this everywhere, but we can't right now.

And I would like to believe that people

don't want you, don't want anybody.

They absolutely do.

What I objected to in the Charlie Kirk Memorial, which I thought was 98% appropriate, I had no problem with the religious aspects of it.

After all, it was a memorial and funeral service.

But anytime someone used the word they, and Stephen Miller did it a lot, to refer to who was responsible for that assassination, it should have been he.

And this has now been whipped into there's a whole movement out there instilling all this violence against conservatives when the facts belie that.

There's too much violence that comes from both sides, and the data suggests, frankly, that more of it is coming from the right than comes from the left.

Your own Justice Department said that.

Yeah, it is both.

It's both.

It's now both.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, but I mean, Pam, I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts.

Nothing is being done.

What about Comey, Adam, Shifty Schiff, Letitia?

They're all guilty as hell.

I just want to, just so people understand why I'm so apoplectic about this.

In 1970, Nixon commented on an ongoing investigation, which was Charles Manson,

who I think we could agree was probably a little more evil than James Comb.

And Nixon fumbled it.

He said Manson was directly

or indirectly guilty of eight murders without reason.

It was such a scandal that he had to take it back and say, last thing I would do is prejudice the legal rights of any person in any circumstances.

And now a president can do this.

Just admit to me we're in a very different place.

And tell me you think it's probably not the best place to be.

No.

I appreciate that he wears his heart on his sleeve.

I'm not mad at him for saying that.

I mean, I've weighed in on,

I have weighed in on things where I'm very passionate, you know,

on different cases in my state of South Carolina.

We're prosecuting pedophiles and giving them one day in jail.

I weigh in a lot on whether a child rapist should get the death penalty.

I'm a yes.

So

I don't have a problem with that, but it is his DOJ.

A president can't always wear his heart on his sleeve, because there's certain things that go with the job of being president, like staying out of this.

I mean, James Comey, we're talking about James Comey, when he was Obama's FBI guy, they meant like never,

because you're not supposed to.

And then Trump comes in, he meets with them like nine times in the first three months.

Well, to be clear, the...

It's a pressure room.

Well, the DOJ actually reports to the, they're in the executive branch and they report to the president.

I mean, that is the way that the DOJ was actually created.

The irony here is it's Jim Comey who got Donald Trump elected in 2016 because you'll remember his mishandling of Hillary's emails when he treated her as if she were being indicted when in fact she wasn't.

By the way, one other point.

Those things that you just read from ensure that this prosecution is going to fail.

It's going to be perceived as a selective prosecution.

It'll never get to a jury.

Oh, okay.

Well, Ken Bondi,

the Attorney General, says

nobody is above the law.

But let me bring up the case of Tom Holman.

He was here last week.

Again, Republican show-up, and I so appreciate it.

And I even said, I'm here for it.

I know.

I even said, you know, thank you for the, you know, he's been doing this since the 80s.

He's done some good things.

I don't agree with the things he's doing, a lot of them with ICE.

But it came out the next day, by the way, the people who were all saying, Bill, why didn't you ask him about this?

Because it hadn't happened yet last week.

The next day, an undercover sting operation recorded Tom Holman taking $50,000 in cash in a bag.

A bag.

Now, we're not going to call this a bribe because that's what normal people do.

They take money in a bag.

And

the FBI, again, because we are way past having an independent FBI or Justice Prophet, says we're not pursuing it.

I want to get your feelings on this and then also your feelings on what Megan Kelly tweeted, which I want to know if this is your feeling too.

It seems to be she's speaking for a lot of Republicans.

She said, we do not care.

Bag of cash in a paper bag.

We do not care.

Is that where you are?

Well, no, I take on Republicans and Democrats.

I call them balls and strikes.

In fact, I'm going.

Come on, man.

No, I absolutely am.

And my record shows that.

But what Cash Patel said is that they investigated this.

It was not true.

He didn't take a bag of cash.

And that there is.

It's on tape.

That's...

Have you heard the tape?

I haven't heard the tape.

I would rather hear the tape and hear what's going on.

But Cash Patel said they investigated it, that he did not do that.

And this was the Biden administration targeting him, trying to ensnare him in something he did not do.

And then the White House stated this week that it didn't happen.

Case closed.

That's what they said.

That's what the FBI said.

They investigated it.

Okay, well, then I made this hat for you.

It's uh

we do not care.

I think it's a good upgrade on the uh

you would like that.

May I say one thing about this?

Yes.

One question for Tom Homan.

By the way, I watched the interview last week.

I thought it was terrific.

Like you, I give him credit for closing porous borders.

That needed to happen.

Oh, yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

With regard to the cash in the bag, one question.

Did you declare it on your taxes?

Because if he didn't declare it on his taxes it's not the tax fraud alleged that I would worry about but it would be evidence of an illicit purpose that's the one question

talking about like paying people for putting forth a policy putting forth a business or something we ought to ban lobbying I mean that's essentially what lobbyists do they take money to go pitch something to Congress or whatever so if we're going to have that conversation just begin ban it all together I mean right for people who are wondering why did did he take the money, because he was going to be in charge of this big department and say you're in the windowless van industry.

They're going to need to buy a lot of windowless vans.

So like, here, sir, maybe you'll think about our company when it comes to buying a windowless van.

I just, you know, my question would be, is this the way honest people accept money?

In a bag in small bills?

I hope not.

All All right, so

I mentioned my friend Jimmy Kimmel up there.

I'm glad he's back on the air, but you know, everyone is a little freaked out these days about getting in the crosshairs of the president and

kind of walking on eggshells.

To the degree I was watching Jeopardy.

And I'm telling you, I don't know if this is because of what's going on, but the categories are really different.

Would you like to hear what the...

I think this has something to do with this atmosphere of fear.

This week, the categories were shithole countries.

Commandments that don't count.

Things that would be better covered in gold.

I think they're kissing up there a little bit.

Good blacks.

Oh.

Women who should smile more.

Deserving Nobel Peace Prize recipients.

That I will tell you.

Things to call Rosie O'Donnell that rhyme with punt.

Things that are like a dog.

And

will Bobby Kennedy eat it?

All right, I'm sorry.

So

you mentioned the event in Arizona, the big big memorial, and I agree with you.

Like, I heard from people who were

absolutely very upset that there was fireworks.

And, you know, and I said to them, I have never been to a funeral out here in Hollywood where I wasn't pressed into service to join in a competitive comedy roast of the dead person.

That's how we do funerals out here.

At least for everybody has to get up, and I'm like, oh, I don't want to have to follow Billy Crystal.

And that's a funeral so people do funerals in their own way I'm interested in your take on whether this was a Christian nationalist event we hear that term a lot I've done a lot of material on it Christian nationalism first of all how do you define it are you one and is it a good thing well you're making it sound like it's a bad thing I'm just asking I just said it up I'm a Christian and Christian nationalist we're talking about how do you define

what do you what do you define it as the inappropriate commingling commingling of politics and Christianity in a country that is supposed to have a separation of church and state.

Well, I mean, our country was founded on Judeo-Christian values.

We have In God We Trust printed on our money.

That came way later.

It did.

Well, it did.

It came in the 1950s.

Yeah.

Well, 1856 for the In God We Trust, I believe, on coins at least.

But no, I mean, I, as someone who is Christian, I don't think it's a bad thing to talk about our faith.

And I saw Charlie Kirk's memorial.

Look, I mean, Jimmy Kimmel is going to get his show back.

Charlie Kirk is never going to.

And if this is a revival to get people back into church and to profess their faith, I'm okay with that.

I listened to Aiden earlier in your interview with him.

It was remarkable.

And he was admitting that our young people,

they lack a purpose.

They were held up in COVID.

They couldn't socialize.

They couldn't go to school.

They can't get jobs.

They got degrees they can't get jobs for.

There's some hopelessness feeling.

And if somebody's faith, this revival in the Christian faith, helps helps kids find their purpose, I think it's actually a great thing for our country.

Something's changed in terms of the GOP.

I came of age in the Reagan 80s as a Republican and then eventually left the party because I thought that the party had changed.

But what I remember is that Jerry Falwell was often in the room.

And the moral majority, right, was then a factor in our politics.

But that was just, and Peggy Noonan wrote a lot about this this week.

That was one constituency of the GOP.

It was like many other constituencies, but it didn't speak for the party generally.

What I saw in the Kirk Memorial, and I'm not objecting to it, it's just it was an interesting lens into the leadership of the GOP today because the entire, I mean, the president, the vice president, and most of the cabinet were all there.

Fine, so long as the establishment clause at some point doesn't get violated.

Just has to make you heighten to a concern.

Well, I mean, I was raised Catholic.

And I'm still bitter about it.

I'm an atheist, so this is not the stuff for me.

I have often thought that Christians have a persecution complex because, I mean, after all,

the religion is based on someone who was persecuted.

I saw a picture of a guy.

Do we have that picture of a guy who is carrying it?

Look, he's got the cross and he's wheeling it.

It's got wheels on it.

That's a good idea.

I love it so much.

Really?

I really do.

You just made water out of wine.

What's not to like about that?

I know, but like this dragging the cross, that really wasn't the hard part of the cross.

It's really the getting up on it.

That's the thing.

Anyone can kind of drag them, you know, and then to put wheels on it.

Well, we had...

We saw the world leaders come to New York this week,

the UN summit, and we had the president of Syria, the Prime Minister of Syria there.

And while he's there, speaking at the UN, speaking with world leaders, we gave him a visa to travel here.

There were Christian villages in Syria that were being burned down.

And in Nigeria.

No, in Syria.

No, but in Nigeria, yes.

Nigeria.

I mean, the fact that this issue has not gotten on people's radar.

Right, no one's talking about it.

It's pretty amazing.

If you don't know what's going on in Nigeria, your media sources suck.

You are in a bubble.

And again, I'm not a Christian, but they are systematically killing the Christians in Nigeria.

They've killed over 100,000 since 2009.

They've burned 18,000 churches.

This is so much more.

These are their Islamists, Boko Haram.

This is so much more of a genocide attempt than what is going on in Gaza.

They are literally attempting to wipe out the Christian population of an entire country.

Where are the kids protesting this?

Thank you.

Thank you.

No one will talk about it, so thank you.

Absolutely.

It's Africa, that's why.

No one's talking about it, and they should be.

You can't read about it on mainstream media.

It's sad.

So thank you for bringing it up.

Well, because the Jews aren't involved.

That's why.

It's the Christians and the Muslims who cares.

It's just.

Now to Tylenol.

Oh, I'm going to love that.

I'm so ready for Tylenol.

Trump's view, pregnant women, tough it out.

Your thoughts.

Well, it's not Trump's view.

What he said, tough it out.

No, I mean, there are other pain relievers you can take.

I mean, ibuprofen, my understanding, I'm not a doctor and I'm not giving medical advice, doesn't hurt your liver as much.

But Harvard and other research institutions and universities have said for years that Tylenol may, there may be a link, there may be causation or causality, and even Tylenol says pregnant women should not take Tylenol.

It's not Trump, this is the medical community that's saying that.

I don't take Tylenol.

And I don't think it's going to kill me, but for these exact reasons.

Not for the liver.

All these things that we take, you know, I don't think we educate people enough to know that there's always a side effect.

There's always something that happens downriver, especially when you block something something in the body.

There's going to be an effect.

So is it one of the more deleterious ones?

I don't think so, but it's not nothing.

But to lay this all on Tylenol, and just let me, this is Trump part of his statement.

I hear Cuba, I hear, again, not exactly how medical people talk.

I hear Cuba doesn't have it because it's very expensive and they don't have the money to have it or they don't want to spend the money to have it.

Oh, they have the money.

They just want to spend it on Tylenol.

They don't have Tylenol.

And I hear they have essentially no autism.

Okay, this is like page one, if you ever took a logic course.

Post hoc ergo proctor hoc.

Means because of,

you don't mix up because of this.

When one thing came, what am I trying to say?

Something happened before and then something happened after, it doesn't mean there's causality to it.

You know, I broke the mirror and then I had bad luck.

It doesn't mean because the mirror broke, you had bad luck.

But the this is the what we're going by RFK says you never see 70 year olds completely non-verbal well outside of Clarence Thomas huh or Joe Biden or Joe Biden

to that point the number of profoundly autistic has not changed.

The number of, I'm sure you know this, we all read in the last week or so on this subject, the number of autistic certainly has spiked.

It's It's because the diagnosis criteria have changed over time.

It's actually not as complicated as they make it out to be.

He made the same observation about the Amish as he made about the Cubans.

That has been disproven.

If you want to go down the rabbit...

The Amish, meaning they don't take

it either.

Right.

They don't have the rate of autism either like the Cubans, and I guess because they can't afford or they won't otherwise give their pregnant women Tylenol.

Well, also because they believe only in natural immunity, I think.

True.

So it has something to do with the vaccine theories also.

Can I just say one thing?

There's a study by Harvard and Mount Sinai, no new data, but it was an analysis of, I think, 46 different studies about a potential link between autism and Tylenol.

And the conclusion was that there were some associations, no causation having been determined.

And it was sort of a cautionary table, like, hey, you might want to take this in very limited supply if you're pregnant.

If the president and if RFK Jr.

had limited themselves to that scientific finding, I think it would have been entirely reasonable.

But as you pointed out, they went well beyond the formula.

But they are using medical studies.

And I just want to say this for parents who do have autistic children.

I have a child not diagnosed with autism, but the parents who understand this with sensory processing disorder.

One of my children, every kid who's on the spectrum has it, not every kid that has it is on the spectrum.

And I can tell you, I've wondered for a very long time, I have two almost adult children, what caused this.

And when the Tylenolstoria came out, I started reading medical studies.

Then I read that Pitocin, when women are in labor, that that could cause autism.

But this child of mine, I've not been able to do the Fourth of July or loud celebrations for their entire life because of this thing that they have.

I want to know, is it chemicals in the food?

Is it Tylenol?

Is it oxytocin that's in the Pitocin?

Could it be an amalgamation of things?

We should hear that, right?

It's important to talk about that.

I think it's all of it.

I think we just live in a very, very toxic culture.

And we're all different on the inside.

We're all, that's why I don't believe in one solution fits all, anything in medicine.

But we all are subject to dirty water, dirty air, dirty food.

A lot of it we do it to ourselves, and a lot of it we just can't help.

And we don't know exactly, I don't know if we'll ever know, but yes, I do.

Parents are desperate to know why.

And so I appreciate bringing attention to the medical issues.

There's a young woman that took too much Tylenol this week and is in critical condition, may die from taking it because she did it in spite of of Trump.

And it's like we should be protecting our kids and women and kids.

And I don't understand it.

And, you know, I think we need to have an honest conversation.

Looking at the medical studies that you mentioned, Harvard and Mount Sinai, just because Trump said it doesn't mean it's not true.

No, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And I don't want to diminish, I hope this chapter doesn't diminish the good work that I think RFK Jr.

is doing with Make America Healthy Again in trying to focus our attention on diet, environmental factors, and getting our kids outside.

Yeah, chemicals and food, MSG, what does that do to us?

I mean, there's so much stuff in our field.

All right.

So I have two minutes to try to get you to admit one thing.

As always, I never get it.

Trump is at the UN, and we completely did a 180 on Ukraine.

Okay, you know, flexibility is good.

But, you know,

it is kind of amazing.

I mean, for the longest time, he was like, oh, but just give Putin everything he wants.

I know how to end this war.

Surrender.

Surrender, Ukraine.

Now this week, he said, this is quote, after getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine-Russia military and economic situation, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and win.

After getting to know and fully understand, it's a little late in the game.

Just admit one thing.

Just admit, if Obama or Biden did this, you'd go batshit.

Well, I mean, well, we have spent almost $200 billion on Ukraine.

And I look at the countries around the world, particularly our European allies, who still buy oil from Russia.

They are funding a war that they are against.

And it's confusing.

And we have our European allies that diminish their military reserves, their munitions reserves, and that aren't spending as much as we do percentage-wise on GDP on their defense.

And it's got to be everybody in it or not.

I'm not for forever wars.

I want this thing to end.

I don't want U.S.

troops anywhere

and take the right decision.

But we've, you know, to me, we've spent a lot of money and our European allies need to step up.

I'm happy that he met with Putin.

I supported having that summit in Alaska.

Dialogue is a good thing.

It has now played itself out, didn't come to fruition.

Okay.

Drop whatever we got left in terms of sanctions.

He said at the end, I wish both countries well, good luck to all.

Just like it's a ruler.

Like it's a football game, not a war.

Good luck to all.

All right, thank you, panel time, for new rules.

Neural Nada, it seems clear that Trump took a DM intended for Attorney General Pam Bondi ordering her to prosecute his enemies and posted it to Truth Social.

He has to tell us, where do you keep the launch codes?

Because I don't know what frightens me more, the power-hungry strongman or the old dude who can't figure out the remote.

Neural, now that Taco Bell just opened their first location in Ireland, someone must ask them why

Ireland already has a place where drunk people eat terrible food.

Ireland.

This is like bringing a restaurant to France called Snails in Shitty Attitude.

Neural MAGA conspiracy nuts must admit that of all the dumb things they believe, the idea that France's first lady, Brigitte Macron, is secretly really a transgender man is the dumbest.

Although I gotta say, that wig isn't helping.

Nero, someone has to explain why it took humans so long to put wheels on suitcases.

We've had the wheel for thousands of years and suitcases for hundreds.

It never occurred to anyone to put a heavy thing you lug around on wheels.

It's like how we had seat belts forever, but didn't put them in the vehicle with the most kids until the 90s.

New Roll, now that it's Fat Bear Week again, where Alaska's Cat Mind National Park lets nature lovers vote for their favorite fat bear, whatever you do, you must turn on Safe Search before you Google Fat Bear.

And Christian wives, if you don't get that reference, but your husband just left, you need to talk.

And finally, new rule, as it's kind of late in the fourth quarter for America and we're behind by three touchdowns, let's make one last stab at a grand bargain between the two sides that hate each other so much.

America used to do this all the time, make bargains, and I've suggested many myself, like You stop saying fetuses are the same as babies, and we'll stop saying trans women are the same as biological women.

You stop saying alternative facts and we'll stop saying my truth.

You stop saying thoughts and prayers and we'll stop with the land acknowledgements.

You admit there's no such thing as voter fraud and we'll admit that getting a picture ID isn't really that fucking hard to do.

Stuff like that.

But as it is so late in the game, let's just go right to the granddaddy of bargains now.

The left will seriously quash all their loony woke shit, and the right will stop the slide into autocracy.

That's really the only card left to play.

Because

the basic problem we have in America is conservatives think the liberals are insane, and they're not completely wrong.

Now, I don't think most liberals are insane, but neither do they make it clear they disapprove of the ones who are, and their cowardice in not marginalizing their own crazies has been their downfall.

I couldn't get Neil deGrasse Tyson, a genius scientist and preeminent scientific voice in the media, to agree that it was ridiculous for a scientific American and the Atlantic to be claiming that separating sports by sex doesn't make sense.

Yes, it does.

Actually it makes perfect sense.

And it's obvious that it does.

And there's a lot of stuff like that on the left.

And when conservatives see it, they say, I'm sorry, we're just not going to go along with reinventing society, often pointlessly, even if we have to cancel democracy to do it.

That's what they're they're saying.

They see gender is only a construct and sex is assigned at birth and they say, we're not doing that.

Transing kids by self-diagnosis with no age limit, no parental notification, and no acknowledgement of social contagion, not doing it.

Asylum now covers any reason for anyone to come to America?

Not doing it.

Homelessness is a lifestyle.

Natural immunity doesn't count anymore.

Whiteness is toxic.

Penis is in women's prisons, welcoming the intifada.

We're not doing it.

And so, folks,

if we are ever going to get back to the old America, that's got to be the Democrats' part of the bargain.

Stop coming up with radically new and often terrible ideas, and then in the next breath, insist there be no debate about any of it.

That if you don't see it right away and go along, you're bad, stupid, and deplorable.

As if you were saying, duh, two plus two equals five, isn't that obvious?

Yeah, it's obvious you can't add.

You can't just say shit.

Math is racist.

Queers for Palestine.

Looting is cool.

Healthy at any weight.

If the men's football team played the woman's team, it would be a tie.

You can't just say shit.

I mean, you can, but it doesn't make it true because you're not Harry Potter.

Smug self-righteousness in the defense of some of the dumbest ideas to ever come down the pike is not a formula that's really working for you.

Because here's one thing I can promise every liberal in this country.

The Democrats can win every election from now until forever.

And the people who now hold the reins of power

will not give a shit and will not give it back if they think you're still nutty.

Which brings me to my friends on the right, to whom I say, becoming an authoritarian police state, that's not going to work for you either.

Do you know what a drag it is to actually have to run a police state because half the population is seething and plotting against you, while all the time you know deep down that they're right about America becoming something that it never was and never should be.

You keep saying the left is more approving of political violence.

Well, who do you think that's going to be aimed at?

I know it feels exhilarating to make the liberals cry their liberal tears after they made you feel disrespected and looked down on and flown over and called the nutty ones.

But come on, I thought you were the tough guys.

Get over it.

You must know that we are really on the edge of a dictatorship here, and you're the only ones who can stop it.

Do you really want to make this a fundamentally different country than the one you claim to love?

A country where we censor the media, disappear people, use the legal system to excuse friends and punish enemies, have a secretish police, hang banners of the dear leader on buildings, sue newspapers and declare war without mercy on windmills.

You know that's all crazy too, right?

So how about starting your end of the bargain with this?

Find one thing Trump wants and tell him no.

One thing.

Just one time,

say,

sir, we'd like to, but we can't.

It's still a government of laws.

Because you're way past flirting with authoritarianism.

Flirting, let's be real, you're fucking it.

And

I get it.

It's hot.

Troops in the streets.

funerals with fireworks, the Department of War, exploding boats, MILFs packing heat,

and in Congress,

the smell of tear gas in the morning, Pete Hagseth without a shirt on.

It's a whole vibe, but it's not going to last.

What good is making America great again if you end up losing the America part?

All right, thank you.

That's our show.

I want to thank Michael Schmerconish, Nancy Mace, and Aiden Walker.

Club Random drops every Monday on YouTube.

We're listening at your podcast.

Now go watch Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

You did great.

I appreciate it.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10.

Or watch him anytime on HBO On Demand.

For more information, log on to HBO.com.